Who Would Have Thought?

Well, it's been a long time since I updated this blog. Far too long.

It's been a busy year, and the time has sped by like a bird flying South for the Winter. Imagine what it would be like to be that bird. There must be signs that the winter is approaching, or that it is time to start flying South before the season arrives. Lucky for the bird - there are no household items to pack, and no moving vans to arrange! Before the bird knows what happened, it is flying with the rest of the pack onto new adventures. Some of these adventures are repeats of last year. However, I am sure that there are new experiences every year.

I think I feel a little like the bird. Every year, there are things to do at certain times of the year. The signs are all around - depending on what event we are talking about, there are still changes in the weather, shorter or longer days, and weather events that signal that a given time of year is approaching.

Humans, being what we are, also depend on the signals that we create to remind ourselves of these events. Perhaps it is due to our removal from living in the environment itself to living in created environments. We create new signals: sundials (leading later to clocks), fire/candles (leading later to lights), and signal songs (leading later to telephones, email, etc).

It strikes me as somewhat funny that with all of our complexity and progress, that many of us are still unprepared for the changes in the environment! Let's face it - how many of us leave things to the last minute, and hope that we will still be successful? Without our created environments, we would have to rely upon the environment itself to signal our seasonal activities. Of course, that kept the population low, as many did not survive into adulthood. There are of course other reasons for this, but surely moving into created environments kept us warmer, and meant we didn't have to move to keep warm or to continue to have sources of food throughout winter. At any rate, when life was tougher, and our ancestors lived in the environment, it was only those groups that worked together that survived.

So, I think I'll make that my lesson for this Thanksgiving. I'm thankful that my ancestors worked together to survive. I'm thankful that people can still work together to survive, and to help others survive. Let's hope that if there are struggles ahead, that people work together to solve problems, rather than laying blame at the feet of scapegoats. Let's try to study the past to understand how to do better. After all, we (meaning our ancestors and us) have been a big part of creating our world, so let's see if we can can move forward together.

Back to "Who Would Have Thought?": A friend actually emailed me today to say that she enjoys this blog. I had no idea anyone even read it :)

Thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving to us all!